Page 37 of Of Steel and Scale

Mom handed me a small pouch that held the scribe quill, writing tablet, and the slightly larger receiving stone. I gave her a quick smile, then stepped back, saluted my parents, nodded to Aric, and motioned Kele to proceed. Once we were underground, I’d resume the lead. As my father had said, there were few around these days who knew the old passages as well as me, thanks to the many years I’d spent here as a kid, dreaming up multiple schemes and stories about the drakkons repopulating the old aerie.

And now the drakkons were here for real.

It might have been brought about by a tragedy, but my inner child couldn’t help but smile.

It was well past midnight by the time we reached the vent. It was little more than a three-foot-wide jagged slit in the otherwise smooth rock face, but the air rolling out of it spoke of the heat and danger that still bubbled deep under the mountain’s heart.

I slung off my pack and took a drink, my gaze scanning the darkness that shrouded these peaks. Nothing moved through the night; there were no sounds, and no stars, thanks to the clouds blanketing the skies.

And yet, I couldn’t escape the sense of wrongness.

It was the same wrongness I’d sensed in the few minutes before the boat had been attacked. While I doubted our enemy would risk attacking Esan before they’d fully understood our strengths and weaknesses, a scouting flyover would not be out of the question. And with the moon and stars hidden, it was the perfect night for it.

“What’s wrong?” Damon asked softly.

He’d stripped off his coat halfway up the mountain, but sweat darkened the collar and underarms of his undershirt. The scent stung the air, sharp but not unpleasant.

“I don’t know.” I flicked the droplets of moisture from my forehead and looked toward the peak we couldn’t see from where we stood. “I think something comes.”

“A scouting mission on a night such as this would make tactical sense,” Damon said. “As would a test skirmish. Keeping the enemy in disarray is a strategy that has proven its merit time and again.”

“Yes,” I said, “but they’re attacking us using flesh-and-blood creatures, and there must be limits in what they can and can’t do.”

“We have no idea what the origins of those creatures are, or how warped or strengthened by magic they might be,” he replied. “Normal limits of flesh and blood—even when it comes to the drakkons—might not matter if altered in such a way.”

I wrinkled my nose and scanned the sky once again. Still nothing, but that unease was sharpening.

“Limits or not,” Kele said, “it wouldn’t hurt to send Esan a heads-up.”

“At the very least,” Damon said, “they can ready the old ballistas. If they can bring down drakkons, they can surely bring down whatever these things are.”

“As long as they don’t get too trigger-happy and start aiming at drakkons again, because that would seriously annoy our captain here.” Kele squinted up at Damon, mischief teasing her lips. “You haven’t had the pleasure of seeing her in a mood yet, I take it?”

“No, but I do look forward to it. A bit of spice is always good in any relationship.”

“Spice indeed.” Kele laughed and glanced at me. “The man has much to learn about you, doesn’t he?”

“We can worry aboutthatonce we uncover what is happening right now.” I tugged the scribe quill and small tablet from the pouch Mom had handed me, and wrote a quick message.

Once it was sent, the tablet cleared, but I didn’t immediately put it away. My father, at the very least, would still be up. He’d always been a night owl.

A few minutes later, his reply came through.Will alert night watch.Have already recommissioned the ballistas and issued standing orders that under no circumstances can they be used against drakkons.

Relief ran through me. I sent back an acknowledgment, then shoved the tablet and quill away and rose. “We should get moving. It’ll take us at least an hour to reach the blue vein system.”

Damon nodded and motioned me to precede him. I carefully squeezed through the vent’s entrance, then slung my pack over my shoulders and flicked on a light cylinder. The pale yellow beam speared the darkness, lending warmth to the rough black walls. This wasn’t a lava tube and, as such, much narrower than the ones we’d reach higher up. It was, however, easy to move through, lacking the moisture and mosses we’d strike later on. It meant we reached the first of the feeder tubes relatively quickly.

It had been a long time since I’d been in any of these old tubes, but little seemed to have changed. This particular one was spectacular, thanks to the forest of lava stalactites that hung from the roof, and the thick black “high lava” lines that ran its length. The air was warm and still, smelling faintly of sulfur and damp earth. The latter came from the main tube, which was the oldest and biggest of all the tunnels and had long ago been reclaimed by mosses and string ferns.

It took us a good hour of climbing to reach it, and by that time, I was sweating profusely and wanted nothing more than to sit and rest for an hour or so.

But time was against us.

Or rather, against the missing recon team. The olm couldn’t harm a drakkon, small or large, but an injured man, however well-armed, would not outlast their tenacity.

“Vahree himself would feel right at home in this place.” Kele placed her pack on the ground and stripped off her jacket. “Can it get much fucking hotter, or what?”

“Oh, it can, and does.” I stopped and untied my water bottle. “The old breeding grounds are basically a sauna.”

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